Tricycle Blog

Michael Green. He's known as a neocon and hawk and is also intended to keep an eye on ASEAN and China and push U.S. (Bush administration) policy in south and southeast Asia generally. Ah, memories of SEATO.
US President George W.
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Nepal's Buddha Boy is back from the jungle he disappeared into a year and a half ago.
A teenage Nepalese boy who some believe to be the reincarnation of the Buddha has re-emerged in a remote southern jungle after disappearing more than a-year-and-a-half ago.
Officials said thousands of his followers flocked to see Ram Bahadur Bomjan speak Tuesday in Bara district about 150 kilometers south of Nepal's capital, Katmandu.
Police said the teenager plans to preach to his devotees for a short time every day for a week, and then plans to return to the jungle to meditate.
Bom
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Danny Fisher points us to this disturbing news: the eminent social activist Sulak Sivaraksa was imprisoned by the Thai government for insulting the nation's royalty. Thailand's royalty lacks real political power but are defended by strict and repressive laws. He has since been released on bail.
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The Dalai Lama, who has said that while his faith in the Chinese people remains strong his faith in Beijing is diminishing, is predictably being blamed by China for the failure of recent peace talks. Beijing accuses him of asking for sovereignty, which he is not.
"They are at a complete breakdown," said Michael Davis, a law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong who frequently writes about Tibet.
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A Burmese blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced to twenty years and six months in prison for mocking the brutal and humorless criminals who run Burma. His blog, in Burmese, is here. (The standoff between Burma and Bangladesh has ended as well.
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Nalanda and the Bamboo Grove
October 27 - 28, 2008
A short ride from Rajgir, one arrives at Nalanda, where is found the vast red brick ruins of a great Buddhist university, and one of the first institutions of higher learning in the world, dating back to 400 AD. Flourishing under Emperor Harsha in the 600's, Nalanda received a visit from the Chinese monk Hiuen Tsang who reported that several thousand students of many nationalities were in attendance. Nalanda, taken from one of the Buddha's names meaning 'insatiable in giving,' enjoyed a reputation around the world. Well known was the strict gatekeeper who administered a test right at the entrance denying admission to 80% of applicants.
By this time, Buddhism was already in decline in India, and was found concentrated in only a few places where there were powerful patrons. Many differing philosophical schools of Buddhism were at variance, the lively yet peaceful debates were like "contending utterances rising like the angry waves of the sea," noted the pilgrim. Even within the Mahayana, there were multiple factions, and some that took on the character of Tantricism. Mathematics, astrology, and medicine were among the many secular subjects studied as well.
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Thursday afternoon, Tricycle caught a press-preview glimpse of this weekend’s Asian Contemporary Art Fair New York. Located on Manhattan’s Pier 92, the event features over 80 galleries from 15 countries, this year including artists from the Middle East and Central Asia.
We were particularly taken by Ran Hwang’s expansive, glittering pin-and-button wall installations. Be on the lookout for her work in upcoming issues. Some of Hwang’s installations can be seen here.
Another of our favorites was the exhibition of the Tibetan Bridge Foundation, an educational nonprofit working to build a community center in a village in Eastern Tibet.
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More Buddhist news this political season: Barbara O'Brien at About.com notes two Buddhists were re-elected to Congress!
And The Buddhist Channel has unsurprising news that repression continues in Tibet and access for foreign journalists is blocked.
Tensions heat up between Burma and Bangladesh over natural gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal. Burma has ominously positioned four warships off its coast. Danny Fisher noted the early signs of this a few days back.
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Here are three new stories we're proud to feature on tricycle.com:
Writer, photographer, and blogger Mikel Dunham writes about Nepal's treatment of Tibetan refugees in "Deporting Protest."
Ed Brickell of Bad Buddha writes about a run after a rainstorm that brings to mind the beginning of the world in "Genesis Run."
Tricycle columnist
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The prez-elect gets some good advice in an open letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker:
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.
Tyentte Deveaux on Shambhala Sun Space writes that Obama's election is a good sign for Tibetans too (despite the Dalai Lama's apparent disappointment with Beijing).
And Konchog a
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Per Danny Fisher:
Avaaz.org is encouraging you to contact Lloyd's of London's insurers to tell them to stop underwriting Burma's junta. DO THIS ACTION!
And there seems to have been some sort of election recently. So we'll put up this instead of the McCain one:
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Rajgir & Vulture Peak
October 26, 2008
[Click photos for a closer look.]
The sunlight was barely discernible as we boarded the musty buses in Bodghaya for what became a six hour trip to Rajgir. A bridge on the main road between the two cities, only 30 miles apart, was inexplicably closed and thus the Buddhist caravan of 11 buses needed to take a less direct route through small villages. Aside from the pain of being bus-bound for so long, the trip was fascinating for its close-up views of village life, and for its lack of the thin strips of urban blight that line most larger highways. The drivers skillfully averted slow moving bullock carts, or feckless goats wandering into the roadway. Our journey seemed equally fascinating to the people we passed, many of whom found our invasion a little shocking. The children just smiled and waved.
Fields of wheat, rice, lentils, vegetables, and fruits took turns passing in and out of view. The villages contained clusters of mud-plastered walls shaded by a few scrawny trees, set among patches of green or dun-colored plots, with colorful fabrics spread out to dry, oxcarts creaking by, cattle wandering about, and kids playing in puddles-- a vision of harmonious simplicity. Even in the smallest of villages there were many little shops-- often duplicates of each other displaying the same hanging goods.
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I got this email from frequent tricycle.com contributor Martha Henry that I thought I'd share:
Voting & Hoping
I voted early this morning at the Martin Luther King Elementary School in my neighborhood. There was a hand-printed sign on the door that said, “Bake Sale Today.” Inside, the sale was going on in the front lobby—cupcakes and Rice Krispies squares. Voting was in the hall to my right. The old woman with the cigarette voice asked, “Where do you live?” I gave her my address. She checked my name on the precinct list and handed me a ballot. I took it into one of the curtained booths, voted quickly with the special pen, then fed my vote to the machine by the exit. I was so giddy I wanted to high-five the guy guarding the machine, but restrained myself.
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Dogo Barry Graham and friends pay a visit to the great and venerable Charlotte Joko Beck.
Burma arbitrarily jails more activists.
Buddhists and politics: Does it even matter what American Buddhists think about politics?:
By most counts, several times more people live in New York City than practice Buddhism nationwide.
But then again who's counting?
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Danny Fisher says the Dalai Lama is "semi-retiring." The DL also says he is losing faith:
The Dalai Lama reiterated that he is losing faith in the peaceable talks he has long pursued with China over the status and future of Tibet. He signaled that he now holds a position of neutrality on the issue and will not comment further on China-Tibet relations.
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Sujata's Village - Bodhgaya
October 24 - 25
Bodhgaya is the most holy, best known, and undoubtedly the most dangerous stop on the Buddhist pilgrimage route in Bihar- the poorest state of India that takes its name from the Sanskrit word vihara, or Buddhist monastery.
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